The tale of the rattle: Using rattle size to understand growth and sexual dimorphism in an insular population of rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus caliginis).

ABSTRACT: Islands have played a key role in our understanding of rapid evolution. A large body of literature has examined morphological changes in response to insularity and isolation, which has yielded useful generalizations about how animals can adapt to live in very small geographic areas. However, understanding the evolution of morphological variation in insular populations often requires detailed data sets on longitudinal patterns of growth and development, and such studies typically necessitate long-term mark-recapture on a large sample of individuals. Rattlesnakes provide a unique opportunity to address some of these difficulties because the addition of rattle segments to the rattle string occurs with regular periodicity and their size directly correlates with the body size of the snake at th

SUBMITTER: Nava RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11236481 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature